Sacred groves refer to patches of forests dedicated to deities often fiery ones. IN their pristine form nobody is allowed to enter into them and lift anything from these areas including leaf litter. Women are not permitted to enter these groves quite often. Sacred groves conceived this way seem to be repositories of gene prots and biodiversity and are thus considered to be part of ethnoenvironment management. The study in this book, however, dispels the myth built around sacred groves and considers the environment management dimension only a contingental fallout of the institution of sacred grove. Sacred groves are social spaces respected by the communities and they play multiple roles. The most significant of these is that of the symbol of self-assertion. Among many communities the sacred groves are mandatorily kept to mark the settlement rights. A Jahar (sacred grove) is a must in every Santhal village of Chotanagpur. The same is the case of the Mahadeo Kolis and Kunbis of W
ABOUT THE AUTHOR J.J. Roy Burman
J.J. Roy Burman (b. 1955) is primarily an antahropologist having done his post-graduation from North Bengal University in Sociology and Social Anthropology. Immediately afater obtaining the degree he worked on the impact off counter-insurgency among the Mizos in Mizoram as a Fellow of Centre for Research in Rural and Industrial Development, Chandigarh. After living there in a village for about one year he joined Help Age India as Project Adviser for East and North-East India. After almost eight years of his direct contact with social work and social engineering, he joined Tate Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, as a member of the Faculty. Apart from teaching Anthropology, Roy Burman also carries out research mainly on the problems in rural areas. Forests, environment, mass religion have been his main areas of interest. He is the first person in India to have done Ph.D. on Sacred Groves from the sociological perspective. Few anthropologists have had the opportunity to travel in the tribal and forest areas all over the country like him. Right now it has become his passion to portray the inter-ethnic harmonious relations in the country.
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